The Golovin era

1816: soldiers of the Kherson Grenadier Regiment quartered in Gori near the BORJOMI Gorge discover a mineral spring in BORJOMI.

1834: the Kherson regiment is replaced by Georgian grenadiers. The regimental doctor Amirov begins to examine the composition and effects of the spring water, and sends the first samples of water to leading medical institutions in Saint Petersburg and Moscow.

1841: the Viceroy of the Russian Czar in the Caucasus, General Yevgeni Golovin brings his sick daughter Yekaterina to BORJOMI for treatment, and after her healing names the springs Yekaterininsky and Yevgeniyevsky.

1842: doctor Amirov requests General Golovin to make BORJOMI a resort, and development of the town’s infrastructure gets underway.

The Vorontsov era

1846: the new Viceroy of the Russian Czar in the Transcaucasia, Mikhail Vorontsov turns his attention to the BORJOMI estate and its mineral water. After making the resort his summer residence, he builds houses, well rooms, baths, parks, churches, hotels, bridges and roads in BORJOMI, and establishes telephone and postal links with Tiflis.

1850: the first attempt to bottle BORJOMI mineral water and export it outside the resort is made when the local military hospital’s chemist Zakharov decided to fill 1,300 oval-shaped half-liter bottles with mineral water and bring them to Tiflis for sale. In the meantime, the Mineral Water Park is founded in BORJOMI.

The Romanov era

1862: Grand Duke Mikhail Romanov is appointed the Viceroy of the Transcaucasia and chooses BORJOMI as his summer residence. This period witnesses rapid development of BORJOMI resort and its transformation into the Russian equivalent of the famous European spa towns Karlsbad and Vichy. At the same time, Russia’s most authoritative institutions are studying curative properties of mineral water from Borjomi.

1890: first bottling plant launched in the Mineral Water Park.

1896: opening of the first glass factory, which over time would produce 10-12 million bottles annually.

1899: construction of the first, 3 thousand hp power station in BORJOMI supplying electricity to the BORJOMI Gorge and three neighboring districts.

1900: the chemist F. Moldenhauer, who developed a method of preserving physicochemical properties of bottled water, arrives to BORJOMI. The scientist suggested carbonation of water, which allowed BORJOMI water to be exported abroad.